This Friday, The Ship Inn, 7:30-10:30pm, Exton/Malvern Cozy and friendly, great food and drink, lots of folks singing along - we play inside, so it is nice and cool. A little quieter here in the summer, but we still recommend that you call ahead to reserve a table where you can hear the music. Close to everywhere, near the intersections of Rts. 202, 30, 100(& just S of the turnpike).And that is the only gig this week, folks! Summer is a wonderful time in a performer's world - lots of opportunities to perform. Too late, as our summer bobsled was careening out of control downhill, we noticed that performing a few times a week had COMPLETELY stopped our creative process. No time at all for writing or recording, or even for learning new cover songs, as all available energy stores were used on preparing for our shows and performing. We both grabbed the brake handle and pulled back, and now our ship has righted itself, and our mission is to put a goodly measure of our energy into the creative process, as well as back into health and well-being. Balance - sometimes you have to fight for it. We live in a world with so very many enticing options - choosing is the tough part. This morning, to guide us in making those difficult choices about time and energy expenditures, we made a chart of our stuff-of-life priorities. Our only goal is to add to Universal love, peace and happiness. To accomplish this at all effectively, we decided to rank our daily activities in order of necessity and importance. We put health at the top of the list, with the subcategories of yoga, aerobic exercise, weights, nutrition, meditation, sleep, and mindful alcohol consumption. Second is business - caring for and growing the business and our finances; third is farm management. Those things gotta get done. Fourth on our list is caring for the environment, both through my job with the land trust and through managing our woods and meadow and developing educational programs here. Fifth is skill development: practicing and learning new things in music and video. Keep in mind, our main goal was to make creativity a priority, and now here it is - coming in ranked at a lowly #6. It seems impossible, since it feels like our main priority, our calling, but the reality is, these other things HAVE to be done. We are hoping the trick is managing these other areas in such an efficient way that we get to #6 quickly each day. Ending up the list at #7 is fun & social events (these got a huge demotion), and we forgot to add in rest, which I guess will come in at #8.If any of you have a better plan, we would appreciate the advice! We are trying to feel our way through this life the best we can. It sure is fun, though, all the time, in all of our activities, to share love*music*happiness with all you dear, shining souls. We often feel like our hearts will burst, but they don't, they just grow.Peace&Love, Donna&Dave